There was a video game alive and flickering on the computer screen. Mark was sitting in front of it, mashing rather desperately at the buttons on a controller as a truck sped toward him on-screen. It crushed his character with a splat, and he tossed the controller aside. “The box serves the Lord of Lies!” he announced indignantly.

Ty laughed, and Julian felt something tug at his heart. The sound of his brother laughing was one of Julian’s favorite noises, in part because Ty did it so sincerely, without any attempt to cover up his laughter or any sense he should hide it. Wordplay and irony often weren’t funny to Ty, but people acting silly was, and he had an absolute and sincere amusement at the behavior of animals—Church falling off a table and trying to regain his dignity—that was beautiful to Julian.

In the dead of night, lying in bed staring at his murals of thorns, Julian sometimes wished he could put down the role that required him to always be the one telling Ty he couldn’t have skunks in his room or reminding him it was time to study or coming in to shut his lights off when he was reading instead of sleeping. What if, like a normal brother, he could watch Sherlock Holmes movies with Ty and help him collect lizards without worrying that they were going to escape and run through the Institute? What if?

Julian’s mother had always stressed the difference between doing something for someone and giving them the tools to do it themselves. It was how she had taught Julian to paint. Julian had always tried to do that for Ty, too, though it had often seemed like he was feeling his way in the dark: making books, toys, lessons that seemed tailored to the special way Ty thought—was it the right thing to do? He thought it had helped. He hoped. Sometimes hope was all you had.

Hope, and watching Ty. There was a pleasure in seeing Ty become more himself, need help and guidance less and less. Yet there was a sadness, too, for the day his brother wouldn’t need him anymore. Sometimes, in the depths of his heart, Julian wondered if Ty would want to spend time with him at all, once that day had come—with the brother who was always making him do things and was no fun at all.

“It’s not a box,” Ty said. “It’s a controller.”

“Well, it lies,” said Mark, turning around in his chair. He saw Julian, leaning in the doorway, and nodded. “Well met, Jules.”

Julian knew this was a faerie greeting and struggled internally not to point out to Mark that they’d already met that morning in the kitchen, not to mention several thousand times before that. He won over his baser impulses, but just barely. “Hi, Mark.”

“Is everything all right?”

Julian nodded. “Could I talk to Ty for a second?”

Tiberius stood up. His black hair was messy, getting too long. Julian reminded himself to schedule a haircut for both twins. Another thing to add to the calendar.

Ty came out into the corridor, pulling the computer room door shut behind him. His expression was wary. “Is this about the skunk? Because Livvy took it back outside.”

Julian shook his head. “It’s not about the skunk.”

Ty lifted his face. He’d always had delicate features, more elfin than Helen or Mark’s. His father had said he was a throwback to earlier generations of Blackthorns, and he looked not unlike some of the family portraits in the dining room they rarely used, slender Victorian men in tailored clothes with porcelain faces and black, curling hair. “Then what is it?”

Julian hesitated. The whole house was still. He could hear the faint crackle of the computer on the other side of the door.

He had thought about asking Ty to look into the poison that he had been shot with. But that would require him to say, I was dying. I should be dead. The words wouldn’t come. They were like a dam, and behind them were so many other words: I’m not sure about anything. I hate being in charge. I hate making the decisions. I’m terrified you’ll all learn to hate me. I’m terrified of losing you. I’m terrified of losing Mark. I’m terrified of losing Emma. I want someone to take over. I’m not as strong as you think. The things I want are wrong and broken things to want.

He knew he could say none of this. The facade he showed them, his children, had to be perfect: A crack in him would be like a crack in the world to them.

“You know I love you,” he said, instead, and Ty looked up at him, startled, meeting his gaze for a flicker of a moment. Over the years, Julian had come to understand why Ty didn’t like looking into other people’s eyes. It was too much movement, color, expression, like looking into a blaring television set. He could do it—he knew it was something people liked, and that it mattered to them—but he didn’t see what the fuss was about.

Ty was searching now, though, seeking in Julian’s face the answer to his odd hesitancy. “I do know,” Ty said, finally.

Julian couldn’t help the ghost of a smile. It was what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it, from your children? That they knew they were loved? He remembered when he had been carrying Tavvy upstairs, once, when he’d been thirteen; he’d tripped and fallen, twisting his body around so that he would land on his back and head, not caring if he was hurt as long as Tavvy was all right. He’d cracked himself pretty hard on the head, too, but he’d sat upright fast, his mind racing: Tavvy, my baby, is he okay?

It was the first time he’d thought “my baby” and not “the baby.”

“I don’t understand why you wanted to talk to me, though,” Ty said, his dark brows drawn together in puzzlement. “Was there a reason?”